


Eaten Alive

by valda



Series: The Deaths of Supreme Leader Snoke [16]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, Character Death, Gore, Graphic Description, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-08 15:43:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12867768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valda/pseuds/valda
Summary: Kylo Ren has a gift for Armitage Hux: the death of Supreme Leader Snoke, in whatever way Hux prefers. The general selects an ancient, horrible form of torture.





	Eaten Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr [here](http://cosleia.tumblr.com/post/168031495193/hey-wanna-try-scaphism-for-the-snoke-death-thing) in response to a Snoke death prompt. Anonymous asked: Hey wanna try scaphism for the snoke death thing?? (Please mind the tags, and check [this link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism) if you're still not sure whether or not you want to read this.)

When Hux arrived on the observation deck, Kylo was waiting for him by the viewport. He’d stretched a thick, red velvet curtain across the room, marking off one of the corners. As the general approached, Kylo called out to him without preamble, “Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?”

Hux came to a stop next to Kylo and eyed the curtain. “I thought you said you had a gift for me.”

Kylo smirked at him. “I do. Answer the question first.”

“The only Darth I’m familiar with is your grandfather,” Hux said.

“And Emperor Palpatine,” Kylo said.

Hux blinked. “What?”

“Never mind.” Kylo waved a hand. “The point is, Darth Plagueis was an extraordinarily powerful Sith. Some said he had the ability to create life itself. But despite his wondrous abilities, he was not able to save his own life. He was murdered in his sleep by his own apprentice.”

Hux frowned. Kylo could sense he was trying to deduce the relevance of the story without asking, so he said nothing more. Finally Hux hazarded, “Is this about trust? About us?”

Kylo had to grin. “Yes, and yes,” he said, “but not in the way you’re thinking. It’s about someone else who trusted me, someone who seemed all-powerful but had the very same weakness Plagueis did.”

Comprehension dawned on Hux’s face. “You can’t mean—you’ve killed him—”

“No,” Kylo said, and at Hux’s sudden horrified expression he almost laughed. Hux’s words, though vague,  _had_ been tantamount to treason. “That’s your gift, pumpkin,” Kylo explained, raising his hands in a patronizing, placating gesture. “You can kill him yourself, in any way you like.”

As he’d hoped, Hux was annoyed enough by the condescension (and the hated nickname) to push past any worry that he’d be executed. “What do you mean, I can kill him?” he asked, scowling.

“I didn’t kill him,” Kylo said, “but I have incapacitated him. I entered his mind and severed the neural pathways that allowed him to move his body and use the Force. His autonomic functions are intact. He can breathe, he can see, he can hear, and he can feel pain. But he can do nothing else.” Kylo dramatically swept back the heavy curtain. Behind it on the floor lay Supreme Leader Snoke, motionless save for short, shallow breaths and the rapid, panicked movements of his eyes.

Hux gaped at Snoke for a long moment. Then he looked back up at Kylo. “This is…a gift for me?”

“And also a gift for me,” Kylo admitted. “If I killed him it would be quick. I want him to suffer. I know you’ll come up with something suitable.”

Snoke’s body looked comically large sprawled out uselessly on the durasteel. With a thoughtful look on his face, Hux stepped forward and kicked the supreme leader in the gut, hard enough to break a rib.

Snoke didn’t move at all. He had no physical reaction to the blow other than a pained moan that couldn’t quite make it out of his throat.

“Kylo,” Hux breathed, turning dismissively away from Snoke, “this is  _wonderful_. And I believe I’ve thought of the perfect death for him.”

“Already?” Kylo laughed. “I knew I could count on you.”

~

Any planet with a warm enough climate would have sufficed, but Hux wanted it to mean something. So they concocted a reason to travel deep into the Unknown Regions, far even from the Rim, to Snoke’s home planet of Ragnacta, and there they arranged for his death.

They chose a broad clearing that received full sun for most of the day. Kylo felled a large tree with his lightsaber, slicing out a piece long enough to cover Snoke’s torso. He cut it in half and hollowed both pieces so that Snoke’s body would fit between them.

While Kylo worked on the vessel that would slowly, torturously transport Snoke to the afterlife, Hux amused himself with force-feeding their captive a mixture of sugar-sweet syrup and nerf milk. Snoke’s body took it in reluctantly but steadily, as Snoke could not fight the stream of bait pouring down his throat. Every now and then Hux took a break from the feeding to baste Snoke’s naked body with the same mixture. He was almost giddy with glee, his movements dance-like as he worked, and Kylo smiled, watching him.

Once both vessel and victim were prepared, Kylo used the Force to place Snoke’s body atop one wooden half-cylinder and then to place the other half over him. Snoke couldn’t move, so the vessel wasn’t technically necessary. But Hux liked authenticity, so they would follow every last step in the ancient execution ritual.

Hux force-fed Snoke some more once he was in position, then stepped back and looked him over eagerly.

“Not much will happen right now,” Kylo said. “It will take time.”

“I want to remember everything about this,” Hux explained, rubbing his hands together and licking his lips. “Everything.”

~

The insects did not wait long. As Snoke’s body baked in the sun, filled and dripping with sweet bait, swarms and colonies converged to cover it, to eat, to burrow, to breed inside the holes they dug in Snoke’s skin.

“Look at him. They’re everywhere,” Hux crowed the second day. Snoke’s head, arms, and legs protruded from the wooden vessel, but they were swollen and pitted and coated with a roiling mass of bugs. The insects had already begun eating out Snoke’s eyes.

Hux fed Snoke more milk and syrup, to keep him palatable to the bugs, and to keep him alive.

On the third day, the stench was sickly sweet, and flies swarmed over Snoke’s face and arms and legs, attracted both by the syrup and by the beginnings of rot. Inside the vessel, Snoke’s distended stomach and bowel continually expended liquid waste, leading worms to breed around and inside his body.

“He’s still alive,” Hux said softly. “He’s being eaten alive, from outside in and from inside out.” And he forced more milk and syrup down Snoke’s throat, staving off Snoke’s dehydration. Making the execution last.

Kylo could feel, if he let himself, what Snoke was feeling—fear, horror, but above all, agony. It was almost too much pain to process, pain unlike anything Kylo had ever experienced. After the third day, Snoke succumbed to delirium, and Kylo found his former master’s mind unable to think, unable to form an emotion, unable to do anything but experience his torture.

It took twenty days for Supreme Leader Snoke to die. When it finally happened, when Snoke no longer drew breath, Hux told Kylo to open the vessel, and Kylo did.

Worms and maggots had grown into Snoke’s body, which was now a breeding ground. Eaten, gangrenous flesh gave way to protruding bone in a mass of rot and muck, nearly unrecognizable as the form of a being who had once lived. The dregs of Snoke’s body lay covered in feces and, now that it was open to the air, flies.

After taking his fill of the sight of Snoke’s ravaged body, Hux moved to stand by Snoke’s head. It was barely more than a skull now, eyes and mouth gaping pits, tongue dry and half eaten.

“I want to crush it under my boot,” Hux said wistfully, turning to Kylo. “But that would soil my uniform.”

Kylo had a solution: “Shall I use the vessel?” Hux nodded eagerly, and Kylo raised a hand. The top piece of wood floated into the air and turned so that it was perpendicular to the ground, right above Snoke’s head. Kylo paused dramatically, holding it there, waiting for Hux to huff in impatience. When at last Hux did, Kylo swung his hand down hard, flinging the half-cylinder into and through Snoke’s ruined face with an extremely satisfying  _crunch_.

And then it was over.

Hux let out a long sigh. “That,” he said, wrapping his arms around Kylo’s neck, “was the greatest present I have ever received. Even better than Brendol’s death, and that was pretty good.”

Kylo pulled him close. “I’m glad you liked it,” he said, leaning in to brush his mouth softly against Hux’s.

“I’m almost sorry it’s over,” Hux said against Kylo’s lips.

“There will be other enemies,” Kylo promised. “There always are.”

Hux laughed and kissed him properly. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “In fact, I think I’ll start making a list.”


End file.
